Thinking this was today’s review (it’s actually last Friday’s), I will proceed to link to the NYT’s review of Expelled.

One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry. . . . Mixing physical apples and metaphysical oranges at every turn “Expelled” is an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike.

Typical. In other news, Richard Dawkins explains himself and why Intelligent Design isn’t a scientific theory in the LA Times.

Entities capable of designing anything, whether they be human engineers or interstellar aliens, must be complex — and therefore, statistically improbable. And statistically improbable things don’t just happen spontaneously by chance without an explanation trail. That is what “improbable” means, as creationists never tire of assuring us (they wrongly think Darwinian natural selection is a matter of chance). In fact, natural selection is the very opposite of a chance process, and it is the only ultimate explanation we know for complex, improbable things.

I know I have much to learn about modern evolutionary science, but I don’t buy this non-chance argument. Regis Nicoll comments on the above.

Congress is talking about Internet Neutrality today, and the president of the Writers Guild of America, West, and other interested parties are giving their POV. A new bill, Internet Freedom Preservation Act 2008 (HR 5353), intends to “enshrine Net Neutrality,” according to SavetheInternet.com. It will place Internet Neutrality, “the longstanding principle that Internet service providers cannot discriminate against Web sites or services based on their source, ownership or destination, into the Communications Act.”

It also requires the Federal Communications Commission to convene at least eight “broadband summits” to collect public input on policies to “promote openness, competition, innovation, and affordable, ubiquitous broadband service for all individuals in the United States.

This makes sense to me, as far as I understand it. We don’t want a large corporate conglomerate to own certain web hosts or service providers and be able to deny or delete content critical of their leadership or companies. If that’s what this bill does, perhaps it is good law.

Frank Wilson points out an interesting mystery quiz.

I hear there was an earthquake in Illinois last night. We did not feel it here. Or if we did, I slept through it. Just in case you were wondering.

I went to give blood tonight, and was rejected. My hemoglobin level, apparently, is a little low. This has never happened before, and I’m nonplussed (I ask you, how many blogs use words like “nonplussed” these days? We give full value at Brandywine Books). My chief suspicion is that it’s a result of dieting fairly severely this week. I’d slacked off for today, just to prepare my corpuscles, but apparently it didn’t do the job.

Or maybe it’s the first sign of a lingering, fatal disease. Whatever.

I’m going up north this weekend for the confirmation of my nephew and godson, The Youngest Nephew (note to burglars who may be reading—my renter will still be here and he’s a survivalist and former Navy Seal, clinging in Midwest bitterness to his collection of classic Uzis). I suppose I ought to sit TYN down at some point and give him a lot of good advice. I’m sure he’d appreciate that a lot.

But somehow I suspect I’ll keep my mouth shut all weekend.

“Walk Hard: The Lars Walker Story.” That’s me tonight. Got my second evening walk of the year in, and it left me more winded than the one I took last week, if I remember correctly. I’m not sure why.

And it was cold. Not cold overall. The landlocked portion of the walk was pleasant. According to the thermometer on my porch, we got up to around 70° (that’s 20° for you soccer fans, though it may be an anomaly, caused by the sun beating on the Astroturf). But going past Crystal Lake, the wind was as bitter as a Pennsylvania voter. There’s still a skin of ice on the lake, and it has its effect.

I apologize for introducing a political note in a book blog, but I want to comment on Barack Obama’s “bitterness” statements. It seems as if all weekend I heard the recording over and over, in various degrees of context. And I think I caught something I haven’t heard anybody else mention.

I’m certain Obama is astonished at the response his words have raised, because he sincerely didn’t intend to say anything offensive. In fact, it’s my impression that his intention was to defend middle class Pennsylvanians, in his own fashion, and he can’t figure out how anybody could take it amiss.

Because in Obama’s world, the kindest, most uplifting thing you can do for another human being is to bestow the status of Victim on him. And what he was trying to say was that the Pennsylvanians are victims too—victims of the economy—and therefore we should cut them some slack if they’re not enlightened enough to vote for him.

What he can’t understand—what is entirely outside his conceptual framework—is the idea that there are people out there who aren’t actually pleased to be labeled victims.

Blockbuster is trying to remaking itself into an major entertainment center. Today it offered to buy Circuit City at about twice its stock value. Blockbuster’s Chief Executive and Chairman Jim Keyes said the new company would be “the most convenient source for media entertainment.”

Tags: Blockbuster, Circuit City, movies, electronics

The mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee, is talking about the funding needed to renovate the downtown library. Private funding works well, and taxes could help if the people support it. The library system needs more money as is without any remodeling plans. Three branches, including the one closest to me, close one more day of week due to limited funds.

Naturally, I like the idea of a great looking downtown library and more of revived branch libraries, but I hope this can be accomplished through private funds. Even special purpose taxes tend to remain after their stated goal is completed. I wonder what a fund-drive would raise or if their is any grant money out there for this. I also think the horse should be before the cart in that a great book collection should precede a great library building.

Tags: books, library, Chattanooga, taxes

Terry Teachout reviews a couple strong plays, the first of which is a Soviet-styled Macbeth. “Mr. Goole’s staging is a prosy, purposefully unmagical updating of Shakespeare’s tragedy in which the action is transplanted from ancient Scotland to the Soviet Union in the darkest days of the Great Terror,” he writes, and Patrick Stewart as Macbeth delivers his role with lines which “still make you feel as though they’d just been written.”

Man, I’m wasted.

Let me rephrase that.

I’m very, very tired, and have been all day. I drank three cups of tea today, which is two more than my usual consumption.

You know how I said yesterday that events had all the earmarks of giving me one of those nights where I don’t get to bed at all?

Sometimes I scare myself. Turned out I was pretty close.

The flight arrival, originally scheduled for 7:30 p.m., got moved back to 8:30 p.m. A while later I checked the airline website again, and now the plane was expected around 11:00.

And then it was midnight.

Then 1:00.

I finally set out for the airport, at midnight. I figured I’d leave about the same time the plane took off from Chicago, since it takes me about as long to get to the airport on a dirty night as it takes to fly here from the city of big shoulders.

And the weather was dirty. Snow mixed with rain. Slushy highways. I drove around 35 or 40 mph all the way.

When I got there, I found that arrival had been moved back again, to 2:00 a.m.

At that point the regression mercifully ceased. I sat by the baggage claim and read a Dean Koontz (The Funhouse—early work, not his best) until Moloch and Mrs. Moloch showed up, and then I drove them back to my place. By that time they’d been thrown off their circadian rhythms so drastically that they figured they might as well just drive home. The weather had lifted, and the roads were supposed to get better the further south you went.

So I got to sleep at about 3:00 a.m.

For all I know, I have my fingers on the wrong keys and am typing pure gibberish.

Ann Althouse asks what movies you have walked out on. I rarely see movies in a theater, so I don’t have much opportunity to walk out, but my wife and I did eject a Doris Day DVD a while back. Caprice is a spy comedy, and I had read about its complicated plot, so I was open to subtleties and a bit of confusion. Still the light but constant sexual humor (mild compared to what’s available today) was not enjoyable.